Dynamic multi-type multi-priority emergency surgery scheduling with accurate service duration estimation

The process of setting surgical schedules in a modern hospital operating room suite is complicated. Scheduling surgery involves coordinating two separate but inter-related service distribution channels, namely, elective surgery operations and emergency surgery operations. Elective surgical cases are selected from a broad range of diagnostic categories and are scheduled in advance into surgical time that usually runs during regular business hours. In contrast, emergency surgery, often referred to as “unscheduled” surgery randomly emerges from a much narrower range of higher urgency indications and is scheduled by allocation onto available operating room time-based on relative priority. The emergency surgery waitlist is particularly challenging to manage as the operating room manager must simultaneously consider multiple patients from multiple priority levels and balance available resources against many uncertainties including demand variability and surgery duration. There is an agreement in medical society that a delay in receiving emergency surgery care can result in adverse patient outcomes. Therefore, based on the urgency of the case, operations are categorized into several priority groups so that each group has its own wait time target within which surgeries should be scheduled.

Faculty Supervisor:

Hossein Abouee Mehrizi

Student:

Mohammad Hossein Eshraghi

Partner:

On Time OR Scheduling

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

University of Waterloo